


Spiderweb

by Emmalyne (orphan_account)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Near Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 11:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3527561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Emmalyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell began on a Thursday. He woke up from a fake nightmare to a real one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spiderweb

**Author's Note:**

> This is cannon compliant up to the epilogue of Blue Lily - I didn't know how to fit the Third Sleeper into it without it taking over the story.

_"'Colin Greenmantle is untouchable,' the Gray Man said. He spread his fingers wide, hand hanging in the air. 'He is a spider clinging in a web. Every leg touches a thread, and if anything happens to the spider, hell rains down.'" -Blue Lily, Lily Blue_

_He should have known better._

Three years had passed since the search for Glendower had been brought to an abrupt end. Three years since he'd seen Blue Sargent. Three years, and neither had bothered contacting the other. But now she was back from school, visiting her family, and turns out Adam had told her about Ronan's home.

She hadn't known.

_Hell began on a Thursday. He woke up from a fake nightmare to a real one. A visit from the police. The fire had been the first thing. Fire at the entrance to the inferno his life would become._

When Blue got back to Henrietta, she called him. "Take me there," she said. She met him at the parking lot of Monmouth. She looked the same as he remembered her, except that her hair was longer, and put up in a bun. She looked sadder, too.

_Then one night, there were loud noises and cursing coming from the living room. Ronan burst out of his door before he had time to think about it. Two men in ski masks were there. Between the two of them, they'd held a struggling Gansey. The taller man had a hand clamped over his mouth._

Ronan hadn’t had the courage to pick her up at 300 Fox Way. He’d insisted that she come back to this shell of an apartment. Although Ronan and Gansey had shared it, it had been Gansey’s, really. It was so full of Gansey’s things.

"Sargent," he greeted her. They stared. He could see the ghosts of Noah and Gansey and Adam, in his mind still teenagers at Aglionby, all around her.

_"Ronan Lynch," the one man had said, nodding at him. Then he shot Ronan's best friend in the head._

"Ronan, I-" but he interrupted her before he could hear how sorry she was. She didn’t know the meaning of the word sorry.

"Get in the car," he said. They drove in silence.

_The next week, an article came out in the newspaper. A fifteen-year-old Aglionby Academy student had drowned. It wasn't news to Ronan. So he drank. He had never gotten so drunk in his life._

Ronan parked his car halfway up the driveway. He wanted to walk the rest of the way so he could take in every detail. He'd been back since the fire (only once, to verify that Greenmantle's gloating had been true, it had, he'd gone back to Adam near tears), but it still didn’t feel real. Blue fit right in here with her stupid handmade gothic dress. No amount of crap in her life could make her give up arts and crafts, apparently. He almost smiled.

_Noah was gone, but that one wasn't Greenmantle's fault. He had just kept fading until there was nothing left._

They walked through the corpse of the Barns. Heaps of burned sticks and crumbling foundations littered the property. The most distinct pile of rubble was also the nearest: what had been the farmhouse. The light that had been eternally on in the sitting room wasn't just turned off now. It was gone.

"Are you angry with me for coming along?" Blue asked. "I know this is private and-"

"There’s no _this_ left," Ronan said. He kicked a piece of unidentified trash on the ground. "Why did you even call me?" he asked. "It’s not like you fucking care." He was pleased by the hurt look on her face.

"I always cared!" Blue said. “I cared too much! You were the only friends I’d ever had. You were like family to me. And then...I couldn’t deal with any of it. I didn’t know what to think. So I did what everyone else did and ignored it. Ran away to school. Adam did the same thing, in case you didn’t notice."

_He’d noticed. Adam had been the only one to actually call Ronan out on what he’d done, what he’d made Adam a participant in. The night of Gansey’s funeral, he’d called Ronan up to his apartment._

_"What the hell have you done?"Adam spat. Ronan was stung by the use of "you", not "we". The blackmail plan had been a joint effort. Adam had volunteered willingly, hadn’t he?_

_Hadn’t he?_

_"Adam," Ronan began. "Please don’t do this. I can’t go through this alone. I need your help, and you need mine." He took a deep breath and looked away. "Adam, I love-"_

_"Don’t," Adam said. “I can barely look at you anymore, Ronan. We caused this. This is our fucking fault.” Adam had begun sobbing. Ronan wanted to apologize, but it felt like a lie. He had known there was a risk. The Gray Man had given him fair warning._

_He could never lie to Adam._

Ronan swallowed. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t force the words out, so he was silent. He looked around the ruin of his old family home. If Niall Lynch was looking down from Heaven, seeing what his favourite son had done to his pride and joy...Ronan couldn't look at it anymore. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the home he had loved and grown up in to reappear when he opened them. It didn't.

"Do you still miss him?" Ronan asked, voice rough.

"All the time," Blue replied. "But I know he would tell me to go on with my life. Every time I cry for him, I imagine him sitting there across from me, saying 'Don’t be silly, Jane,' and I can smile again."

"So it really helps?" Ronan was surprised, and pleased at this little fact he could add to his memories of Gansey, that awful nickname. He’d forgotten that. How had he forgotten that? Blue paused for a minute.

"No," she said.

"No? You just said-" he stopped, shocked into silence by the tentative touch of her hand on his arm.

"Maybe this will help," Blue whispered uncertainly. She leaned in. He felt her sweet breath on his mouth and his eyes widened in confusion.

_The sparkle in Gansey’s eyes when he’d talked about Blue. The way Adam and Ronan had smirked at each other whenever the two of them had been flirting in their presence. Somehow he could feel it, all of it._

Ronan kissed her back.

_Adam and Ronan, sitting side by side in the hay, trying to revive the animals. Their shoulders touching. Their awkward smiles, their stolen glances. Adam’s beautiful laugh._

Blue wasn't Adam, and Ronan wasn't Gansey, but they were comforted nonetheless. It was soft and chaste, and there was no passion - neither of them was really into the other. It didn’t take long for Blue to break it off, stepping away from him.

_They had always been walking away from him, each in their own ways. Maybe Greenmantle had only accelerated the process._

"I better go," she said. "I’ll get a cab back from the road, so you can have time alone here, or whatever."

 _Nights spent suffocating on the floor of Adam’s non- air conditioned apartment, the two boys breathing only inches apart from each other. Feeling_ whole _for once in his goddamn life._

"Yeah," said Ronan. She started to walk back to the car. Bits of rubble crunched under her shoes.

"Wait!" he called after her. She stopped, turned around. There were tears streaking her face. Ronan didn’t know if they were from remembered joy or from grief.

"Yeah?" she asked.

_All of them, sitting in a boat on a man-made lake in Cabeswater, hunting for a king._

"It was good to see you, Jane," he said.

**Author's Note:**

> A bit evil, I know. Y'all are most thoroughly welcome ;) I remind you that technically, this could yet be cannon.


End file.
